The Treasure Under the Fortress
In a recent Forbes article, Peter Kafka explained the true value of a property such as MySpace.
"Soon MySpace's ad salesmen will use software that sifts through its members' profile pages and sorts them based on the often piercingly personal information they pin up on their pages," Kafka wrote. "Then they'll compile 'buckets' of its members and offer them up to advertisers. Looking for married men who live in the U.S. and own dogs? Single women with college degrees who drive pickup trucks? For a fee, MySpace will deliver you directly to their cyber doorstep."
While Kafka conceded that Murdoch's dream of an über efficient online advertising aggregator and delivery network might be a goal for the future, he pointed out that right now MySpace is fast becoming a dominant publisher, able to raise rents for ads on a hot property.
One recent MySpace coup: Fox recently dangled increased MySpace presence in front of advertisers to further boost the value of its 2008 Super Bowl ads, which will cost $2.7 million for a 30-second spot.
According to comScore, 7 percent of the 1,000 viewers it surveyed went online to watch ads after last year's game. MySpace had 126,000 unique viewers of the game's ads in the week after the Super Bowl.
Consider what this means. If Murdoch's vision for the digital ad world of tomorrow can be reconciled with his power plays of today, he can revolutionize the way marketers approach me when I sit down to watch the next Super Bowl. While companies such as Anheuser-Busch have carpet bombed the big game on the novel theory that a 29-year-old male might enjoy beer and with his football, they've always pushed their biggest brand: Bud. Of course, with the blunt instrument of TV ads, they didn't have much of a choice beyond their most common brand. But think how much Anheuser-Busch might pay Murdoch to know that I prefer an import like Tiger beer (another of their fine brews). Now, imagine a media buy where Murdoch can serve up everything the beer-maker wants to know about me and the rest of the people on MySpace while we all tune in to watch the big game. I'll get the Tiger ad, my neighbor will get the Bud ad, Anheuser-Busch will get a huge ROI, and Murdoch will make money every step of the way.
Note to Anheuser-Busch: The iMedia team in Culver City loves all of your brands.
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